It’s a concept that is inevitable if people learn to think, learn to learn, learn that they are the creators of culture. Critical thinking embraces the individual power to create, collaborate, question, reinvent, and so forth. When we teach or help learners develop their critical thinking, we are not teaching revolution in the political or economic sense, though either of those may come; rather, we helping learners revolutionize their own consciousnesses.

Revolution of consciousness is far more threatening than political or economic revolution because it is permanent, sustainable, decentralized, humanizing, and is multifactorial.

As teachers, as humans we must strive for this sort of revolution. The world belongs to those who own their own minds.

I agree, and on several levels. First, the word revolution is quite evocative. It’s an emotionally charged concept. I think it’s usage can alienate as many people as it brings forth. It’s polarizing. I think I intend it to be in some ways. Second, revolution often gets away from the revolutionaries, and can morph into something unexpected (unless observed through an historical lense first). But, I think, perhaps, this is the nature of revolution, maybe even the reason for such a word. It indicates a cycle. It’s something living. Something replaces the old and stale only to become old and stale itself, and the cycle continues. Thanks for the comment.

Walk Out, Walk On suggests that our human systems are all living since we populate them. However, the book also argues that once a system is established, it’s nearly impossible to change. Instead, competitors begin new systems in competition with the old. In that revolution replaces and transformation changes, maybe it’s time to talk more here and on the back channel about which we support, just as we once debated the merits of reform and transformation.

Under the USA’s culture I fear the notion of “revolution” harkens back to the Founding Fathers who, viewed as establishing a new system of governance, had ripped off the Magna Carta in significant part. How about a perspective of critical thinking as generating the “new” instead of a revolution, recreation, reconstrution or re-anything?

I have a question for those who picked up Walk Out, Walk On: Did anyone else notice how the Ohio version seemed awfully similar to what was already in place? I am cynical and so I may be entirely off-base, but I think it comprises “Walking out, American style”, that is, walking out (but not really) and walking on (a nearly identical path).